Yes, Chefs!

TASTE recently geeked out in a big way when we got to chat to MasterChef legends Marco Pierre White and John Torode – all in the same month. We managed to control our celebrity chef-induced  excitement long enough to find out what their combined 106 years in the food biz have taught them

MARCO ON…

… becoming a chef:

“I never wanted to be a chef, but I came from very humble beginnings. In the seventies, when you came from humble beginnings, had your father been a miner, you’d have gone down the mines. My father was a chef and he had done his training at the great hotels of northern England, just like my grandfather did. So I followed in their footsteps. It was just a job for me.”

… his first gig:

“At 16 I started working at the Hotel St George in Harrogate in northern England. In the afternoon, I used to polish the clients’ shoes round the back of the porter’s lodge. One day, I walked there and saw that a client had left behind a copy of Egon Ronay’s Guide to Hotels and Restaurants in Great Britain. As I paged through the little book, I saw that the best restaurant in Britain, The Box Tree, was 15 miles down the road. So I went back to work that evening, and the next day and the following week and month, but I never forgot about The Box Tree. One day I plucked up the courage and asked them for a job. The good fortune was that the week I approached them, a chef had given his notice.”

… when the bug bit: